War Anniversaries: it’s all going so well, isn’t it?

Autor: Jan Oberg and Annette Schiffmann

Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on 03/20/2009

March 20 marks the 6th anniversary of the US-led invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq – coming upon 12 years of the most cruel sanctions history has witnessed.

About 2 million innocent Iraqi citizens have died as a consequence of those Western policies. About 4 million out of 24 million are either displaced inside the country or refugees abroad. In a country where more than half the entire population is well under 20, hundreds of thousands are clinically traumatized.

At the same time Western media – part of the MIMAC, the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – give wide publicity to a BBC opinion poll that shows that “security” has improved in Iraq.

It is going so well, isn’t it?

The West has now – at what is likely to be only the beginning of worldwide economic breakdown and environmental decay – secured the majority of profits (up to 75%) from Iraq’s oil wealth. This means destroying life opportunities for nearly every Iraqi, even the yet unborn – “nearly” because a few Iraqis who must have been paid for this sell-out. It is sanctions in a new key. Read here if you ever wondered whether oil was a leading motive and here about the secret plan behind it.

It is going so well, isn’t it?

President Obama has announced withdrawal – a withdrawal that means staying. What will stay are 50.000 troops, advisers, mercenaries, 4 mega and some 20 major U.S. military bases and many more ‘facilities’ – all listed by GlobalSecurity.org:

Remain will also the 6000-staff U.S./CIA Embassy, history’s largest ever and the de facto ruler of new, ‘democratic’ Iraq.

Yes, some troops will be withdrawn but more importantly, profits will be squeezed out of the only wealth this totally devastated country possesses. If you think that is wrong, you are called a ‘resource nationalist’ and nationalism is not a good thing.

Such nationalists simply won’t see it: it is going so well.

And what should those be called who think it would be morally appropriate to say ‘we are sorry’ to the Iraqis and pay them some compensation for the sanctions and the war?

Next, in just a few days on March 24, it is the 10th Anniversary of NATO’s destruction of Rest-Yugoslavia – under the present U.S. Secretary of State’s husband’s Administration; not one of Bill Clinton’s arguments and assumptions about that conflict has turned out to hold water.

Thanks to that bombing, particularly in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, it is all going so well now, isn’t it?

The Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who enthusiastically spearheaded Denmark’s tragic participation in Iraq’s destruction from 2003 to 2007 – in other words, an non-convicted war criminal – is a top candidate to the post as NATO Secretary-General.

That continues a tradition from when Javier Solana, the present EU ‘foreign minister’ in that position presided over the illegal destruction of Yugoslavia. So, NATO – defender of freedom and democracy – has no qualms about war criminals. With that political and moral blunder behind him, Mr. Fogh Rasmussen’s judgement will influence those whose fingers could be on a nuclear button in a future crisis.

But that is going to go well too, isn’t it?

No mainstream media remind us of these anniversaries. Perhaps we have lost a sense of history. Perhaps we are in denial? Perhaps, they don’t really feel like a triumph for the West today?

TFF predicted they wouldn’t be. Way back and when it mattered.

This is what we published about Iraq between 2002 and 2005, here are all the warnings and all the fairly precise predictions:

Here is our Middle East section since then.

And here is the evolving TFF Plan for Peace In and With Iraq that we continue to believe must be implemented before it can be said that life is improving for Iraq and the Iraqis

If it is really going as well as we are told, may we ask for whom is it going so well?

And in whose interest is it that you believe it is going to go well for the Iraqis?

Salaam in spite of all!

Bio:Jan Oberg, PhD in sociology, peace and future researcher. Former director of the Lund University Peace Research Institute (LUPRI); former secretary-general of the Danish Peace Foundation; former member of the Danish government’s Committee on security and disarmament. Visiting professor at ICU (1990-91) and Chuo Universities (1995) in Japan and visiting professor for three months at Nagoya University in 2004 and 2007. Annette Schiffmann is a printer, designer, photographer, human rights and peace activist with a focus on the embargo and war against Iraq over the last six years: www.antikriegsforum-heidelberg.de. Much more at www.transnational.org